Jet is regarded as a minor gemstone and is normally either black or dark brown in appearance. It has been popular for thousands of years for jewellery, especially beads. It became especially popular in the late nineteenth century for mourning jewellery and as decoration on black garments (both mourning and fashionable forms).
The appearance of real jet was often copied with black glass beads, which are often called French jet.
Sources:
- RAPP, George R. (2009). Archaeomineralogy, Berlin, Heidelburg: Springer, pp. 118-119.
- Shorter Oxford English Dictionary: ‘Jet’.
Digital source of illustration (retrieved 8 July 2016).
GVE